Saro McKenna is the CEO of Dacoco GmbH and cofounder of Alien Worlds.

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​Meta’s announcement that it will remove its metaverse project Horizon Worlds from Quest VR headsets inevitably provoked sneering responses about the death of the metaverse. Far from signaling the technology’s death knell, though, Horizon Worlds’ demise merely illuminates the differences between what Zuckerberg was building and what the metaverse ought to be.

The New York Times was one of many publications that responded to Meta’s announcement predictably, accompanying its article with a cartoon headstone embossed with "RIP The Metaverse." However, most of the article explored why Meta specifically struggled to get Horizon Worlds off the ground, noting the success of alternative digital worlds like Roblox and Fortnite.

To say the metaverse is dead because Meta mothballed Horizon Worlds is like claiming sneakers are obsolete because Nike is abandoning footwear. The truth is, the metaverse is bigger than Meta—it always has been.

A Premature Obituary

Facebook’s 2021 decision to rebrand itself as Meta, and spend tens of billions on Horizon Worlds, put the metaverse firmly on the radar of people who were previously unaware of its existence. As such, Meta/Horizon Worlds became the metaverse; when it failed, it’s perhaps inevitable that the concept itself was deemed to have failed.

But reaching this conclusion is like adding two and two to get five. Meta’s project stalled not because users weren’t interested in the metaverse but because they weren’t sold on a centralized VR platform in which they didn’t own anything and had no power.

Despite the announcement of a $50 million creator fund to compel developers to build engaging virtual content, the incentives weren’t compelling enough for regular users. Meta’s approach called to mind the infamous line "You’ll own nothing and be happy" from a 2016 World Economic Forum video.

From the beginning, Horizon Worlds couldn’t shake off the perception that their metaverse experiment was, well, an experiment—an extremely expensive one, admittedly, but a stab in the dark all the same. Despite the early hype, organic growth didn’t follow at the expected scale.

Although Horizon Worlds will remain available on mobile phones, it’s clear Meta is pivoting in another strategic direction in line with its aggressive cost cutting and embrace of AI. The fact that it’s quitting the metaverse so soon suggests, perhaps, that it never truly "got it" to begin with.

Virtual Worlds Are Thriving

The metaverse has always, to an extent, been hamstrung by its lack of a clear definition. Gene Park of The Washington Post saw it as a domain for people to work and socialize—the "next version of the internet." Fortnite defines it as a place to play and create. Roblox talks about a platform for "immersive virtual worlds." Alien Worlds is a decentralized realm where users can compete, conspire and govern.

Such fuzzy definitions shouldn’t hinder the metaverse long term because like the internet, it's always been difficult to summarize succinctly. Over time, the metaverse may simply come to be a technology people experience and recognize intuitively. Nobody has to define the internet—it’s as ubiquitous as the air we breathe.

Virtual worlds continue to thrive: Roblox alone reported a record 144 million average daily active users (DAUs) in Q4, 2025. Clearly, players value spending time in these environments. It’s all about experiences and incentives. The demise of Horizon Worlds only shows that users weren’t buying what Meta were selling: a VR version of Facebook with some extra bells and whistles, navigable via an expensive headset.

In many ways, Meta getting out of the metaverse business could be good for virtual worlds, emphasizing the importance of putting users first and focusing on shared experiences, rewards and empowerment. If a company with Facebook’s resources and stature can’t make a centralized metaverse work, other Web2 companies seeking to do the same will think twice.

This isn't to say the metaverse must be decentralized, necessarily. Roblox is highly centralized and going from strength to strength—a consequence of its emphasis on user-created games, economic incentives (Robux), interactivity and player collaboration.

The Metaverse Isn’t Dead

Ultimately, the important thing is that the metaverse meets a genuine market need and compels users to keep coming back. With decentralization, the argument is that players will return because they have the power to effect meaningful change rather than being cogs in a centralized machine.

This begs the question: If Horizon Worlds had been decentralized, could the user base have influenced the direction of travel and helped organically build a virtual world with mass appeal?

The metaverse isn't dead, but Meta’s version of it is. Now, the onus shifts to existing and future iterations to build and refine virtual worlds that resonate with users—worlds characterized by engaging social dynamics, generous gaming opportunities, monetizable user-generated content and genuine community-driven governance.

Users ought to be the masters of the metaverse. Let that be the lesson learned from Horizon Worlds’ cautionary tale.​

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